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INTELLECT; AND HOW TO USE IT. 

AN ADDRESS 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE 

CLIOSOPHIC AND AMERICAN WHIG SOCIETIES 

OP THE 

COLLEGE OF NEW JERSEY, 

kL 

June 24th, 1863. 



BY KEV. THEODOKE L. CUYLER 

BROOKLYN, N. Y. 






NEWAKK, K J. : 



PRINTED AT THE DAILY ADVERTISER OFFICE. 
1863. 



Jo* 



Clio Hall, June 24th, 1862. 

" Resolved, That the thanks of the Society be tendered to 

the Rev. Theo. L. Cutlek for his able and eloquent address, 

delivered to-day, and that a Committee be appointed to solicit a 

copy for publication." 

JOHN T. DUFFIELD, 
JOSEPH L. MUNN, 
H. W. JACKSON, 
T. A. BALDWIN, 
E. D. LEDTAKD, 

Committee. 



Whio Hall, June 24th, 1862. 

" Resolved, That the thanks of this Society be returned to 

the Rev. Theo. L. Cutlek for his able and eloquent address, 

delivered before the two Societies this morning, and that a copy 

be requested for publication." 

H. C. CAMERON, 

F. B. HODGE, 

S. SAYRE, 

Committee. 



ADDRESS. 



Twenty-one years ago, an inexperienced lad — parting from 
his classmates — left the gateway of yonder College green to 
enter upon the march and the bivouac of active life. The 
auroral light of youth beamed on oar pathway. The future 
rose before us in many-colored visions of toil and of triumph 
— of struggle and conflict, of sorrow and joy. 

That future is now the past — sobered by experience into 
the " light of common day." That lad is before you — an 
eager visitant to the home of his literary boyhood. 

Wearied by the daily friction of long pastoral toil, I said to 
myself, let me go home and re- visit venerable Princeton — pro- 
lific mother of four thousand cultured sons ; — who has nursed 
on her loving bosom men, the weight of whose spears was 
"like unto a weaver's beam." I will go and see the spot 
where Dickinson and Davies watched and prayed beside the 
cradle of academic culture in a rustic hamlet — where Wither- 
spoon's voice rang for liberty above the crashing thunder of 
hostile guns — where Southard and Frelinghuysen (New Jer- 
sey's twin Castor and Pollux) began their bright career — 
where young Biddle mused beside the Castalian fount, and 
Brainerd Taylor mused beside the cross — where James Madi- 
son sinewed his strength tor great constitutional combats ; — 
above all, the spot from which America's mightiest philoso- 
pher soared upward in his chariot of fire — his sepulchre still 
with you to this day ! 

Coming back to this sacred spot, I find myself at home. 1 find 
the memories of my boyhood still floating among yonder trees. 
The old college-bell rings again for me. I hear again in yon- 
der chapel the call of that roll, which Death has been busy in 



calling ever since, and to which many a brave spirit has calmly 
answered " here !" 

For this home of my youth I feel grateful. Will it be too 
much for me to say, that I had rather have spent those six 
educational years in the class-rooms of Princeton than within 
any other walls in our land ? Some other institutions may 
boast of greater antiquity or of a more muncificent endow- 
ment; a larger number of volumes may be stored in the 
alcoves of Cambridge ; a larger number of students may be 
gathered under the elms of Yale. 

But if the true heraldry of a college is the names of its 
sons, then Nassau Hall need not blush to present her catalogue 
beside theirs. Nor need she fear to claim that for a symmetri- 
cal influence upon the whole mental character — for practical 
training in scientific research — for civil pursuits, or for pulpit 
disquisition, she is the peer of any American University. 

If I may be personal and local in my allusions a moment 
longer, let me say that I count it an especial favor that my lot 
was cast here at one of the golden eras of Princeton's history. 
Never were the class-rooms filled with a larger 'array of pupils. 
Never were the chairs of both institutions graced with more 
distinguished incumbents. The polished culture of James W. 
Alexander then adorned the chair of Belles-Letters. Carna- 
han presided, with dignity, over the domain of Philosophy ; 
Torrey's skilful hand held the retort and the blow-pipe ; and 
an eye, too modest to meet the gaze of a fellow-man, was not 
afraid to out-watch Orion and the seven stars through the 
telescope of the astronomer. The flashing wit, and silvery 
voice of Albert B. Dod, (then in his splendid prime) threw a 
Dew charm over the higher Mathematics. From all parts of 
the land Hocked devotees of science to the laboratory of Henry ; 
while to the other end of the avenue gathered students of theol- 
ogy to sit at the feet of the sainted Miller, and the two incom- 
parable Alexanders. 

With the teachings of these greal men, 1 rank the advan- 

of the i \v<> Literary Socities, which in those days were 

held to be supplements to, and not substitutes for the regular 



curriculum of the college. As training-schools for the bar, 
the forum and the pulpit, they cannot be overrated ; none but 
a fool would despise them. Many a man has made a more 
splendid figure in public life from the culture and discipline 
received in Whig Hall. And for myself, I am grateful that 
in the period of life most susceptible to female beauty I paid 
most assiduous court to that muse with the white neck and the 
snowy limb, whose motto is " Prodesse Quam Conspici." 

Young gentlemen of the Societies, this is a literary festivity. 
The purpose for which you are banded together is intellectual 
advancement. You are here equipping yourselves for the 
mental and the moral encounters of life. These college class- 
rooms and these literary halls are the Gymnasium of the 
mind ; and when your education is completed here, you are to 
go out into the world and commence your studies. The intel- 
lects here trained are to be employed on that arena before you 
— and on the method of their employment depends the issue 
of success or of failure — on this hangeth the glory of life or 
its inevitable shame. 

Intellect — and how to use it — is the theme I have chosen 
for the hour. Let me offer you briefly such practical thoughts, 
with such illustrations from human history and biography as 
I have been able to throw together in the intervals of a most 
exacting profession. 

For what has the Creator given us our brains ? Why are 
affluent mental gifts bestowed upon some men? And how 
may even moderate abilities be made most effective for the 
promotion of truth, and the well-being of humanity ? These 
are questions that concern young men — especially those who 
are placed on the highest planes of intellectual culture and in- 
fluence. All men are concerned in these questions ; for a 
great man is, perhaps, the greatest fact in the history of an 
age. No more decisive influence can be brought to bear upon 
any age, or any community, than the employment of its high- 
est intellect for truth or for error — for God and the right, or 
for the Devil's wrong. Intellect ennobled — purified — heaven- 
directed is the universal power to build up, Intellect pervert- 



8 

ed, corrupted, sin-directed is the most terrible of agencies to 
pull down and destroy. "How shall I use my intellect?" is 
the most vital moral problem -that can come before the court 
of your conscience. 

Some men hold that talents are given for the same purpose 
that wealth is often inherited — for mere personal luxury. 
There be intellectual millionaires who decorate their mind, as 
a palace, for pride to walk through. Its superb picture- 
galleries, whose walls a creative imagination has clothed with 
visions of entrancing beauty — its saloons of receptiveness, in 
which stately thoughts do come and go — its costly libraries, 
where memory stores up its massive accumulation, shelf on 
shelf — its statue-lined corridors and halls, are but the splendid 
realm which self has adorned by the " might of its own power, 
and for the honor of its own majesty." Scarcely a living being 
is the wiser, the better, the happier for such mental monopo- 
lists. They stand in the midst of humanity as the marble 
mansion of a selfish Duke might stand in the midst of a pov- 
erty cursed and squalid peasantry. While the nabob is gorg- 
ing at his rosewood table, or lounging before his Murillos, the 
poor Lazarus without is begging crumbs for the lean and 
hungry brats, such as Murillo portrayed upon his canvass. 
One man surfeits ; the others starve. There is enough for all, 
if it were distributed. Distribution is Heaven's law — whether 
the treasures be in the lordly mansion, or in the lordly mind. 
For God never gave to man fine intellectual powers — vigor- 
ous understanding — strong-winged imagination — cunning in- 
vention, or soul-rousing eloquence for the owner's sole use 
and benefit. Talent is trust. Let no man covet it, unless 
there come with it wisdom from above to ensure it a right 
direction. 

One student uses his brain — as he uses his midnighl lamp — 
merely to illuminate, the page before his single eve. Another 
man makes his intellect a meridian sun ! How bountifully docs 
the full urn ot noonday overflow ! Not only on Alpine peaks, 
and "heart of the Andes," kindled into pyramids of fire, but 
down into modest vales the sunlight foils — warming the honey- 



9 

suckle o'er the cottage doorway — lifting the tiny wheat blade 
from its earthy tomb — and even when some solitary daisy is 
shaded beneath an overgrown tree, the generous sun wheels 
round and round, until before nightfall the daisy too is reached, 
and fills her little cup with golden light. Such full-orbed in- 
tellects there be. They turn midnight into noon. Upon the 
most elevated minds and the most favored classes their rays 
may fall the earliest ; but at length the lowliest vallies of 
human life are warmed in the celestial influence. So rose the 
tent-maker of Tarsus upon a benighted age. Amid the gloom 
of the sixth century shone out Augustine — amid the prejudice 
of the fifteenth beamed Christopher Columbus. The sixteenth 
century came in with clouds and darkness on its awful front. 
God said "let there be light," and Luther was ! When his sun 
departed with its trail of glory, the moral heavens beamed, in 
turn, with Lord Bacon, Milton, Isaac Newton, Leibnitz, Pascal, 
Edwards, Chalmers — each an overflowing orb of truth. 

Have you never observed the descriptive phrase which In- 
spiration employs to set forth the moral benefactors of man- 
kind ? The phrase employed is the happy one of " watering," 
conveying the noble thought that it is the office of great intel- 
lect both to descend and to distribute. 

In the torrid lands of the Orient, it was the wont of mon- 
archs to construct vast reservoirs on the mountain-sides. 
These were filled by the rains of heaven. When the summer- 
heats had drank the gardens and the vineyards dry, the waters 
of the reservoir were conducted down, and forthwith the wilted 
vine lifted its head again, and the drooping fig-tree smiled. 
Green grew the pomegranate at the water's cool touch ; and 
golden grew the barley-haryest. So on the heights of influ- 
ence God replenishes intellectual reservoirs. He fills them 
from on high. He fills them to irrigate the masses below 
them. The truths that accumulate there will stagnate if self- 
ishness lock up the sluice-gates. But let it be your ambition, 
young gentlemen, to accumulate for others ; freely receiving, 
freely give. Let not the curse that rests on him who hedges 
round his well in season of drought — or on him who locks 



10 

up his granary in time of famine rest on you, for intellectual 
stinginess ; the meanest of misers is he who hoards a truth. 

The sources of intellectual power are various. The range 
of employment for your mental attainments will be as various 
also as your several pursuits in life — far too wide for the reach 
of a single hour's discussion. But there are two sources of 
mental power and usefulness, which are opened to every young 
man who has a brain to think or a heart to feel. Learning 
and Eloquence — getting the truth and giving the truth— are 
the two most attainable possessions for every healthy mind. 
For while the Creator has bestowed great analytical acumen as 
a gift comparatively rare — while the imagination, which can 

" Glance from heaven to earth, 
From earth to heaven," 

belongs to a favored few — while fertility of invention is a 
monopoly of genius, yet nearly every healthy intellect can 
acquire truth and impart it. Young brethren, every affirma- 
tive man in your class (who is not smitten with congenital bar- 
renness) may become measurably learned and measurably elo- 
quent. For what is learning but storing the interior man 
through the five conduits of sight, touch, smell, taste and hear- 
ing, and so storing it that . every precious parcel shall be at 
arm's reach in the instant of need ? This depends on industry 
— not Genius. (Unless you make Genius to be the power of 
doing with prodigious rapidity, what other minds effect by 
slow and steady strain — as the driving-wheels of a locomotive 
achieve the same number of revolutions in a minute that the 
wheel of a baggage-wagon accomplishes in an hour.) 

Within the last few years England and America have laid 
in their honored graves two men, who were prodigies of ac- 
quirement unsurpassed. One of them lies by the side of 
Addison in Westminster Abbey. The other — a name-sake of 
Addison — lies by the side of President Edwards in yonder 
Westminster Abbey of. America. One of them, when at 
school, was known among his school-fellows as " Macaulay, 
the Omniscient." From boyhood he was a terrible toiler. He 
saw every thing; he heard every thing; he read every thing; 



11 

he remembered every thing. It is even said that if every copy 
of Milton's Paradise Lost had been committed to the flames, 
the whole of the matchless epic could have been recovered, 
line for line, from the tablets of Macaulay's memory. That 
Macaulay had genius none will deny ; but his special power 
was the power of acquiring, classifying and presenting vast 
arrays of truth, and so presenting them as at once to enrich 
the memory and captivate the understanding. He was one of 
the distributing reservoirs of History. He is the father and 
founder of a school of authorship, in which he as yet stands 
without an equal. Other men have penetrated into profounder 
political philosophy. Others have preserved a more rigid im- 
partiality. But no other man has combined in himself such 
power of acquisition, and such power of presentation — such 
exhaustless wealth of knowledge " from the royal cedar to the 
hyssop of the wall" — such enthusiastic conception of the 
grand and heroic, mingled with such detestation of what is, 
sensual, selfish and devilish in human history. In his own 
fine language it may be said of him that " among the eminent 
men whose bones lie near him in the Great Abbey, none has 
left a more stainless, and scarcely one a more splendid name." 

If Macaulay had no superiors in Britain, he certainly had 
one American rival in powers of acquisition and retention. 
His own attainments in the domain of letters and of civil his- 
tory were not more remarkable than the attainments in sacred 
literature, in oriental reseach, and in ecclesiastic history, by 
Joseph Addison Alexander. 

As I pronounce that hallowed name, the visions of student- 
days come back before me. I seem to see again that form as 
it once stood in that sacred desk ; I seem to hear again those 
plaintive tones as they once melted on this air. That square, 
massive head, (which we fancied to be like to Napoleon's,) 
rises once more before us ; the ruddy glow on the cheek a 
beautiful emblem of the soul-health within. From those lips 
we seem to hear again those streams of concinnate exegesis — 
those brilliant bursts of impassioned vehemence — those tides 
of holy emotion — all poured forth in a voice that sometimes 
2 



12 

swelled through the vestibule to passers in the street, and 
sometimes hushed itself to the plaintive melody of a lute. 

Such a reservoir has not been opened from any American 
pulpit in our generation. No man ever saw the bottom of 
that profound, capacious, all-containing, inexhaustible intel- 
lect. No man ever laid a task too heavy on that herculean 
memory. From a single reading he could commit a whole 
discourse ; from a single perusal he rose up master of an intri- 
cate volume — his mental recreations were other men's arduous 
toils. A thousand pulpits are the richer for the accumulations 
of that one busy and beautiful life — that career of labor and 
of love. Alas for us, that such a life should have ended ! 
Alas! for the bereaved town — the bereaved seminary and 
church, that never can grow reconciled to its bereavement ! 
We go into our libraries, and behold two fatal gaps in two 
favorite departments of study ; and we ask ourselves " who 
will ever finish yonder magnificent History since Macaulay's 
hand has forgot its cunning ? Who will ever carry on those 
affluent commentaries since Addison Alexander has passed to 
the loftier knowledge and clearer light of the Heavenly world ? 

Lest any one should be discouraged by the presentation of 
such prodigies of mental acquisition as the two celebrated ex- 
amples just cited, let me say that they owed their eminence 
and usefulness to herculean industry. Young men, choose for 
your patron-saint, industry. Get some starling to cry work — 
work — work — study — study — study. Study every thing, but 
with a bearing on your own line of intellectual labor. Concen- 
trate on one point, or a few points, " as a gardener, by severe 
pruning, forces the sap of the tree into two or three vigorous 
limbs, instead of suffering it to become a sheaf of spindling 
twigs." Concentration is the secret of strength. "Stick to 
your brewery," said the great Rothschild to Mr. Buxton, "and 
you will be the first brewer of London. Try to be brewer, 
banker, manufacturer and merchant, and you will soon be — in 
the gazette." 

" Mr. A often laughs at me," said Professor Henry once 

in yonder College Laboratory, "often laughs at me, because I 



13 

have but one idea." He talks about every thing, aims to excel 
in many things, but I have learned that if I ever make a 
breach, I must play my guns continually upon one point. 

This sober wisdom met its reward. He gave his days and 
nights to physical science. From the time when, an obscure 
youth, he studied Silliman's Journal by fire-light, in a log- 
cabin, on to the day when English dukes and earls rose up to 
do him respect, he had but one aim in life — to add to the sum of 
human knowledge. He found the earth and air full of elec- 
tricity, and he found, too, that the galvanic current slow, but 
steady, and continuous, was worth a thousand brilliant electric 
flashes. He set to work upon this, with might -and main. 
He linked battery to battery ; harnessed the subtle fluid 
into gigantic magnets, and made it lift prodigious burdens. 
And when at last, by his untiring toil, a chaos of facts was 
marshalled into the symmetry of a science, when, in obedience 
to his guidance, (in common with other co-laborers) the elec- 
tric current mounted the wires as a message-bearer round the 
globe — then did the Genius of Truth, crown Joseph Henry 
with the benediction, " thou hast sought me and found me, 
because thou didst search for me with all the heart." 

II. Thus much for the acquisition of knowledge, which de- 
pends upon a busy biain. It is the result of concentration, 
and industry invincible. 

Eloquence, on the other hand, which is the second source of 
intellectual power that I am commending to you — eloquence 
is the golden product of an inspired heart. No elaboration of 
rhetoric — no oratorical culture can produce it, which ignores 
the spontaneous emotions of an honest, fearless, loving heart. 

Would you rule men • from the rostrum, from the bar, or 
from the sacred desk ? Let no devil cheat you out of your 
conscience ; let no callous critic shame you out of your honest 
emotions. 

For what is eloquence but truth in earnest ? The mind's 
best words spoken in the mind's best moments. 

When truth gets full possession of a man's conscience — when 
all his sensibilities are aroused and his sympathies in full play 



14 

— when the soul becomes luminous, until the interior light and 
glow blazes out through every loop and crevice — when, from 
head to foot, the whole man becomes the beaming, burning 
impersonation of truth — then is he honestly, naturally, irre- 
sistibly eloquent. To this a great head is not always essen- 
tial ; a great heart is, and must be. 

David wailing over his self-ruined darling Absalom — Paul 
pleading before Felix, until the guilty man paled to the color 
of his marble throne — Martin Luther, stretching up to the full 
height of his manhood, in those words, ''here I stand, I can- 
not otherwise ; God help me ; Amen" — Patrick Henry, sound- 
ing the key-note to Bunker Hill, in, "give me liberty, or give 
me death !" — Whitfield, depicting the perils of a lost soul on 
the verge of the pit, until the plumes on Duchesses' head- 
dresses quivered, and Chesterfield cried out, " Good God ! he 
is gone!" — Kossuth, sounding the requiem of his dead nation- 
ality — and Alexander Duff pronouncing his sublime farewell 
to the heathery hills of Scotland — these men were eloquent, 
not by special inspiration of the head, but by overpowering 
inspiration of the heart. The burning soul kindled the lips ; 
and the baptism of eloquence came in the form of a " fiery 
tongue." 

The loftier the emotion, observe, the more impressive the 
utterance of the orator. The same law applies to eloquence 
that applies to hydrostatics. If the jet is to be thrown to a 
great height in the public fountain, the spring that feeds the 
fountain must have a lofty birth-place on the mountain -side. 
He who is false to the better instincts of his soul, seldom can 
be eloquent. To the limber-tongued politician laboring with 
cunning speech to make the worse appear the better side, 
to the hireling pleader who barters justice for a fee, or to the 
hireling priest who sells souls for salary — nature denies to 
such that gift which she reserve's for the leal and loyal spirit. 

The grandest achievement of eloquence has been reached 
when the orator has received the fullest celestial baptism of 
love —when self has become swallowed up in the glory that 
surrounds the cross of Calvary. 



1-5 

And where should we look for the highest realizations of true 
eloquence, but in the pulpit? Where is there less excuse for 
tameness, for affectation, for heartlessness, for stupidity? 
Where can the strongest intellect find fuller play ? For the 
ambassador of truth has not only the loftiest of themes, but 
his text-book is the most perfect of models. In it may be 
found every thing that is most sublime in imagery — most 
melting in pathos — most irresistible in argument. The min- 
ister of Christ need not betake himself to the drama of Greece 
— the forum of Eome — or to the mystic retreats of German 
philosophy ; he need not study Chatham in the Senate Cham- 
ber, or Erskine at the bar. He may ever be nurturing his 
soul amid those pages where John Milton fed, before those eyes 
which had " failed with long watching for liberty and law," 
beheld the gorgeous visions of " Paradise." He may be ever 
amid the scenes which inspired Bunyan to his matchless 
dream, and taught Jeremy Taylor his hearse-like melodies. 
The harp of Israel's minstrel is ever in his ear — before his eye 
moves the magnificent panorama of the Apocalypse. He need 
but open his soul to that "■ oldest choral melody" the book of 
Job ; if it used to inspire Charles James Fox for the Parlia- 
ment-house, why not himself for the pulpit ? Paul is ever at 
his elbow to teach him trenchant argument — John to teach 
persuasion, and a heart of steel must he have who is not 
moved to pathos in the chamber of heart-stricken David, or 
under the olive-trees of Gethsemane. The Bible is the best of 
models too, for it is always true to the life. It reaches up to 
the loftiest — down to the lowliest affairs of existence. The 
same divine pencil that portrayed the scenic splendors of the 
Revelations and the awful tragedy of Golgotha, condescends 
to etch for us a Hebrew mother bending over her cradle of 
rushes — a village-maiden bringing home the gleanings of the 
barley -field, and a penitent woman weeping on the Saviour's 
feet. What God has ennobled, who shall dare to call com- 
mon? What true orator of nature will fear to introduce 
into the pulpit a homely scene, or a homespun character — a 
fireside incident or a death-bed agony — the familiar episodes 



16 

of the field and the shop, the school-room and the nursery. 
He does not lower the dignity of the pulpit ; he rather imparts 
to it the higher dignity of human nature. 

Would that the pulpit — which is the most potent educator 
among us — would that every pulpit were thoroughly liberated, 
not only from a time-serving expediency that muffles its re- 
buking thunders, but from a contemptible petit-maitreism that 
curbs its free manly activities. 

From the pulpit, the statesman should learn the "higher 
law " of justice and of right ; the merchant should learn the 
golden rule of integrity. Before the pulpit the politician 
should breathe an atmosphere of such crystal purity that a 
descent into the Avernus of our ordinary " politics " would be 
instant suffocation. The patriot should find his minister more 
patriotic than himself; the maiden should be the purer for his 
delicacy ; the mother should find a christian culture made the 
easier for his luminous portraiture of the child-life's joys and 
sorrows. His every utterance should be a fresh inspiration to 
the artist — a fresh stimulus to the intellect of the scholar. No 
man should build so high, but the pulpit should build above 
him. No reckless youth in his wildest aberration of profligacy 
should ever reach a pitfall or a precipice that had not been 
mapped out to him before-hand in the pulpit. And on life's 
rough highway, no sinning sufferer should faint or fall — or be 
flung into thicket so dense and dark, but over him should 
bend Christ's messenger of love, and into his bleeding wounds 
should distil the balm of Heaven's Gospel. 

In all this, is there no scope for the loftiest intellect? 

Jfl. Young gentlemen, I trust that I have not wearied you 
by this didactic homily. Lest I may do so, let me invite you 
(before I close) to an episode in the history of American elo- 
quence. It furnishes an illustration of the employment of in- 
tellect on an occasion, and (or a purpose of transcendent inter- 
It is not new to you in the whole outline; but some of 
my limningB may present to you new features of the spectacle. 
In these Bad tunes the scene has a striking, and almost melan- 
choly significance. 



17 

The twenty -sixth of January, 1830, will ever be memorable 
in the forensic history of the Republic. It was a day to be 
remembered. From an early hour of that January morning 
the great avenue of Washington was lined by a steady proces- 
sion moving up to the Capitol. To witness the expected con- 
flict, "Washington sent forth its first and its fairest ; every city 
in the land was represented in the splendid assemblage. Be- 
fore twelve o'clock, the Senate Chamber was overflowing into 
the Rotunda, and men were offering bribes for a few inches of 
breathing-room within the charmed enclosure. One enormous 
member, from Alabama, (the weightiest legislator that ever 
obstructed the view of the public from any political question) 
became wedged in behind the Yice President's chair. Unable 
to move, he became slowly imbedded in the crowd — like a 
broad-bottomed schooner settling at low tide into the mud. 
Unable to see, he drew out his knife, and after a long effort he 
pierced a hole through the stained glass that flanked the pre- 
siding officer's chair. The aperture, which tradition says was 
long visible in that window, is the memorial of Dixon H. 
Lewis's curiosity to witness the greatest of American debaters 
deliver the greatest of American orations. 

The place was worthy of the hour, and the combatants. It 
was the old Senate chamber — the battle-arena of the giants — 
the same hall which had once resounded to the polished elo- 
quence of Rufus King, and which had echoed back the mur- 
murs of applause that greeted the farewell address of Henry 
Clay. On that memorable morning the chamber was thronged 
with nearly all the eminent men whom any one thinks of 
when he thinks of American oratory. From the President's 
chair lowered the portentous eye, and cast-iron brow of John 
C. Calhoun. Before him sat Yan Buren and Forsyth, and 
Woodbury — the eloquent Hayne and the. strong-minded Clay- 
ton — the omniverous Benton, who aimed to know everything, 
and the indefatigable Quincy Adams, who actually succeeded. 
In the seething crowd that day was the gaunt skeleton form of 
John Randolph, of Roanoke — the eccentricity who once closed 
a four days speech by saying, " Mr. Speaker, I am sorry to 



18 

take my seat; for I am just approaching the threshold of my 
subject." The imperial figure of Clay, and the thoughtful 
face of Silas Wright, were alone wanting to have made it the 
most brilliant assemblage of civilians since the era of the 
Eevolution. 

In the midst of that breathless chamber — where the echoes 
of Col. Hayne's silvery eloquence were still lingering on the 
air — Daniel Webster arose! His friends remarked, that in 
deference to the great occasion, he had arrayed himself in 
the old Whig costume of Burke and Fox — the u buff and 
blue." An austere beauty clothed his swarthy countenance. 
Within the cavernous eyes the furnace-fires were slowly kin- 
dling. The signal-gun of the memorable speech was in those 
well-known words which have oft been rehearsed on the plat- 
forms of Nassau Hall. I need not recite them. Nor need I 
detain you to review all the points of that colossal effort, nor 
tell you how the constitutional cannonade rolled its three hours 
of unbroken thunder, until the last miserable shred of " nulli- 
fication " was shot in ribbons from the wreck ! Nor need I 
tell you how, in his Olympian wrath, the orator turned sud- 
denly upon the Senator from New Hampshire, with the terrific 
sneer, " I employ no scavengers" — -and the Senator ducked his 
bald head as if dodging an actual bombshell ! 

And how, when Mr. Webster pronounced the magic words, 
"there is Massachusetts, behold her for yourselves! — there 
is her history ; the world knows it by heart ! — there is Con- 
cord and Bunker Hill, and there they will remain forever," 
the sons of the old Bay State present bowed their heads, and 
wept right out like little children. How shall I tell you with 
what awe-struck silence they all listened to the deep diapason 
of the closing passage — the grandest that ever fell from Ameri- 
can lips? 

"Mr. President — When my eyes shall be turned to be- 
hold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him 
shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once 
glorious Union ; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; 
on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fra- 



19 

ternal blood ! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, 
behold the gorgeons ensign of the republic, now known and 
honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, not a 
stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured — bearing 
for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all 
this worth f but everywhere, spread all over in characters of 
living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over 
the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole 
heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American 
heart — Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable /" 

It is no wonder that the New England men that day strode 
the avenue with the port of conquerors — it is no wonder that 
the whole land opened their hearts to it as the looked-for 
"evangel " of constitutional law, and the most majestic utter- 
ance of the American Union's organic vitalizing principles. 

" Mr. Webster," said a friend of ours once to the Great Ex- 
pounder, " which of your own productions do you place first ?". 
He replied, "my friend, Mr. Everett, prefers my speech on 
Gen'l Jackson's Protest. The mass of my countrymen prefer 
my reply to Col. Hayne. But I prefer the first speech I ever 
made at Plymouth Kock." Perhaps the great statesman was 
right. His reply to Hayne does indeed stand as the high- 
water mark to which forensic oratory has yet attained in the 
United States. But in that better time coming, when the sun- 
light of love has melted off the last manacle — when, to the 
silvery music of falling chains, America is marching up to her 
destiny, then it will be confessed that Daniel Webster never 
stood more strong and never more glorious than when he stood 
forth the champion of Freedom on Plymouth Kock ! 

I have presented to you this episode for a double reason. It 
furnishes a fine illustration of eloquence — of trenchant argu- 
ment, made " red hot " by noble passion. It furnishes a strik- 
ing example, too, of intellect employed for one of its loftiest 
ends — the elucidation of great political truths, and the enforce- 
ment of those principles that save a country. 

And when, in all the range of human historv, has a loftier 
3 



20 

goal been set before the human mind than that which Provi- 
dence now presents to America's best intellect — even no less 
than the salvation of the Kepublic, " time's noblest offspring," 
if not its "last?" Not only the grandest eloquence may be 
evoked, but the profoundest study and the broadest knowledge 
are in requisition. 

Into the thick of this crisis Providence is bringing you, my 
young friends, and those of you who graduate to-day are to 
be ushered at once into the arena of this prodigious struggle. 
From studying history, some of you are now to live history, 
and help in making history for time to come. From these 
quiet retreats where you have been putting on life's armor, 
you are to go forth to try now the mettle of your steel. 

The great problem which you and I are to do our humble 
part towards settling, is no less than the problem how to re- 
store, how to rebuild, how to perpetuate the grandest federated 
government that ever shed its sunshine on a people. 

On this great topic of the hour, permit me a few frank 
word here, where free speech has always been held sacred. 
For in these days silence is suspicion, and neutrality is treason. 

The great problem of the hour is — how to restore, how to 
strengthen, how to perpetuate our beloved Union. For we 
are beginning now to see that — under its original conditions — 
our federal Union was never strong enough for the strain that 
was to come upon it. Federated governments or republics 
need not be weak or be short-lived. That United Eepublic 
which stout William of Orange founded amid the fens of Hol- 
land, stood more than two centuries, and then only gave place 
to a constitutional monarchy. The Swiss Confederation has 
existed ever since that night when, on the greensward of Grutli, 
William Tell and Arnold Melcthal swore the great oath for 
Helvetic liberty. No convulsions, civil or religious, have ever 
been able to shatter the political Union that exists between 
England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. All these were small 
states in territory compared with us, you say; but as an offset 
to this fact, they were exposed to the collisions and interfer- 



21 

ences of powerful rivals close to their borders. Their Unions 
have existed for generations ; but ours, after increasing threats 
and increasing perils of dissolution, was cloven asunder by 
armed treason in the seventy-third year of its existence. 

For from its birth, one fatal element of weakness entered 
into our republic. Some of the States came into the Union 
reluctantly. South Carolina (I do not wonder at it) hesitated 
to vote for the Declaration of Independence. At first she 
gave her vote against that memorable charter of freedom ; and 
only reconsidered it for an enforced unanimity. I fear that ft 
is too true that our now fallen and dishonored sister — the 
wilful " Effie Deans " of the national household — once made 
unchaste proposals of alliance with the British Crown. South 
Carolina was not alone in refusing, at the outset, allegiance to 
our glorious Constitution. Georgia (then embracing Alabama 
in its limits) joined with Carolina in rejecting the Constitution, 
until a recognition of the slave trade for twenty years was 
introduced into the document.* In the Convention, Mr. Kut- 
ledge, of South Carolina, said, " the true question at present 
is, whether Southern States shall, or shall not, be parties to 
the Union." Mr. Pinckney re-echoed the sentiment. His 
colleague stood out with him until brought in by a surren- 
der, most abhorrent to the first instincts of moral right. But 
this is not all. There was not only a diversity of social 
institutions between the States of the North and the South, 
but growing out of it a diversity of sentiment on the fun- 
damental principles of free government. As early as 1776, 
John Adams wrote to one of our Generals — " however, my 
dear friend Gates, all our misfortunes arise from a single source, 
the resistance of the Southern colonies to Republican govern- 
ment." " Popular principles," he says, " are abhorrent to the 
inclinations of the barons of the South." Even then the sage of 
Quincy detected the germ of the discordance ; even then he 



* These historic facts are drawn from an address by Hon. Senator Sumner, in 
Not., 1861. 



22 

discerned on the face of the sky that little cloud, "no larger 
than a man's hand," which has since gathered volume and 
blackness, until the whole land smokes under its hideous 
apocalypse of fire and blood. He saw then that we were at- 
tempting the experiment of CJnion without unity. For three- 
quarters of a century we have been trying, with ever varying 
fortunes, to preserve political Union, without civil and social 
and moral unity. Two widely different organisms of society 
have existed, and now exist, on the two sides of that geographic 
line once traced by the surveys of Mason and Dixon. I do not 
stop to-day to discuss the moral rightfulness or wrongfulness, 
the good or the evil of these differing systems of labor and of 
social life ; I merely indicate the great fact, that in the North 
and at the South there prevail two diverse and conflicting 
organisms of society. And time, instead of assimilating, has 
only widened the chasm that yawned between them already, 
when John Adams and Pinckney joined hands over the Con- 
stitution. The growth of the nation has but widened the 
breach. Every year of development has developed the organic 
difference ; every year has only made the " iron " harder, and 
the " clay " softer in the feet of the national image. The peo- 
ple of the northern portion of the federation have been con- 
stantly becoming more democratic in their opinions and their 
usages ; this has been intensified by foreign immigration. The 
people of the South have been growing correspondingly more 
aristocratic in their principles of living; and this tendency has 
been increased by the increasing price of their great staple of 
production and the increased money value of the servile class 
that produced it. At length, when the organic conflict grew 
too strong for the bonds of nationality, the decaying cord 
snapped, and disunity became disunion ! 

" Secession," said a prominent man in the rebellious conven- 
tion of South Carolina last year, "secession is no spasmodic 
effort that has come suddenly upon us. It has been gradually 
culminating for a long series of years." Mr. Rhett contended 
(in the same Convention) that secession was " not produced by 



23 

the result of the presidential election, or by the non-execution 
of the fugitive slave law. It is a matter which had been gath- 
ering head for thirty years !" And that paragon of political 
wisdom, Mr. Keitt, said — " I have been engaged in this move- 
ment ever since I entered political life !" This gigantic con- 
spiracy, which with one arm plundered the national armories, 
the national navy yards, and the national treasure-houses, and 
with the other struck its poiniard at the nation's life in the 
capitol, is but the natural, the inevitable result of that organ- 
ism of society, of which the conspiracy was born. Thirty 
years ago, in this very town, the most eminent of the living 
graduates of this college (the Hon. Mr. Senator Southard) fore- 
told the very result that has j ust come about ; although to his 
prophetic eye there was not revealed the terrible apocalypse of 
the seven vials of bloody woe that treason has poured out on 
our desolated land. It is useless, my countrymen, to disguise 
the fact any longer. The experiment of attempting cordial 
unity, and permanent national existence, under two broadly 
diverse systems of labor — of social life, and of political ethics, 
has failed. It is not democratic government that has failed, 
(as the old world absolutists would flatter themselves). It is 
not the Constitution of '89 that has failed ; it is not republican 
freedom that has failed ; but a false and fatal attempt to com- 
bine two hostile and repellant systems in one vast common- 
wealth has failed, and just in time, too, to save the nation. 
For this war is not the destruction of the republic, but of the 
monstrous growths of wrong and political falsehood that for 
half a century have imperilled the republic's existence. For 
one, I do not, I can not despair of the Kepublic ! Though no 
small tempest lieth upon us, yet the hour that shall lay bare to 
the light of heaven that corner-stone of our national structure 
--laid in Puritan heroism and prayers — that awful hour has 
not come, and never will come. Whatever be the present 
aspect of the conflict, be assured that God will destroy nothing 
that He deems worth preserving ; He will save nothing which 
His justice dooms to destruction. If this tremendous convul- 



24 

sion shall finally result in making us a homogeneous nation — 
one in social systems — one in political ethics — one in loyalty 
to the Constitution and the Union, then shall we look back 
with gratitude to see how the wrath of treason was made to 
praise true liberty — how the nation's hard " necessity was 
turned to glorious gain." In thus settling anew the status of 
our independence upon a firmer basis, offences will come. 
Fiery conflicts will rage. Exasperations will continue during 
the whole generation that has waged this civil war. Eevenges, 
deep and deadly, will mutter through clenched teeth their 
maledictions, or lie in ambush to strike the coward blow of 
retaliation. 

But time and Providence, and the beneficence of right, will 
heal this stupendous hurt. The day will come when the only 
vestige of these furious fires will be in the purification they 
effected of the nation's dross — when the only memorial of all 
these bitter tears will be the crystalline whiteness of that 
escutcheon which their tears have washed ; the day will come, 
— bright with a seven-fold brightness, — when through this very 
air, now darkened by driving tempest, will rise the resplendent 
fabric of a Union restored and re-beautified — its whole frieze 
sculptured over with the story of its achievments — its every 
pillar hung with glittering shields of victory. 

In this beneficent work of love and loyalty you are to bear 
your part. For in the words of our gifted Secretary of State, 
addressed to the late Presbyterian General Assembly's Com- 
mittee — " The men of our generation, whose memory will be 
the longest and the most honored, will be they who thought 
the most earnestly, prayed the most fervently, hoped the most 
confidently, fought the most heroically, and suffered the most 
patiently, in the sacred cause of Freedom and Humanity." 
Can a nobler use be made of the noblest intellect than to con- 
sume its powers in the salvation of such a country? to the 
attempted destruction of which so many men of genius have 
prostituted their resources of cunning and of skill ! Alas ! 
alas ! for us that from these very walls some of these patricides 



25 

should have gone forth ! that some of the companions of our 
youth, who once sat beside us in yonder class-rooms should now 
be sitting amid the dark and disappointed cabals of treason ! 
Alas ! for our beloved Alma Mater, that as she gazes on the 
gaping wounds of our bleeding country, she 

Should be " made to feel 
Her culture nursed the pinions that impelled the steel !" 

But that is her misfortune — not her fault. Those misguided 
men never learned lessons of treason on this sacred soil. They 
belong, too, to a past never to be renewed. Heaven grant 
that Nassau Hall has given her last diploma into a hand that 
shall strike a dastard blow at the nation's liberties ! 

Be it your part, my young friends, to profit by their exam- 
ple and avoid their errors. Be it yours to vindicate the re- 
nown of your college — to consecrate yourselves to your G6d 
and your country. Set out with the solemn resolution never 
to violate your conscience, and never to compromise the right. 
Set your faces in the direction in which human events are 
marching, and the finger of God is pointing. Dare to be 
right ! Dare to be in the minority ; for truth is often found in 
the minorities. " The great surge of numbers," as one has 
said, " rolls up noisily, but flats out on the shore, and slides 
back into the mud of oblivion. But a true opinion is the 
ocean itself — calm in its rest, eternal in its power ! The storms 
and thunders of popular rage and wrong will sometimes pause 
in their travel round the sphere, and listen to its powerful 
voice. And if the night comes down to veil it for a time, it is 
still there, beating on with the same victorious pulse, and wait- 
ing for the day." 

To-day a Queen of Beauty — more beautiful than ever graced 
an ancient tournament — entrusts to you her sacred banner of 
the Right! Unfurl it to the light — never to be furled again. 
Through whatever of storm and tempest that rage round 
your head, keep that snowy banner flying — and when at last 
you fall, let its celestial folds wind round you as your winding- 
sheet ! 



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And like that heroic Count D'Auvergne, who fell in the 
thickest of the fight, your names shall never perish. For at 
the early morn, when the reveille was sounded, and the roll 
was called, some comrade (at the name of Count DAuvergne) 
responded—" Died on the field of honor." 

So in coming time— when the long roll of Princeton's heroic 
sons shall be called off— may your descendants not blush to 
stand up and respond for you—" Died on the field of honor— 
for God and Liberty!" 



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